rules.[384] These rules, based upon observation and logic, prescribe unity of action; that this action should have a beginning, middle, and end; that its parts should proceed naturally one from the other; that it should excite terror and pity, so as to instruct and improve us; that the characters should be distinct, harmonious, conformable with tradition or the design of the poet. Such, says Dryden, will be the new tragedy, closely allied, it seems, to the French, especially as he quotes Bossu and Rapin, as if he took them for instructors. Yet it differs from it, and Dryden enumerates all that an English pit can blame on the French stage. He says: "The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions.... He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these last ten years, or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except the 'Liar'? and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated,... the most favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's.... Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read,... their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the 'Cinna' and the 'Pompey'; they are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reasons of state; and 'Polieucte,' in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons.... I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French; for as we who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious."[385] As for the tumults and combats which the French relegate behind the scenes, "nature has so formed our countrymen to fierceness,... they will scarcely suffer combats and other objects of horror to be taken from them."[386] Thus the French, by fettering themselves with these scruples,[387] and confining themselves in their unities and their rules, have removed action from their stage, and brought themselves down to unbearable monotony and dryness. They lack originality, naturalness, variety, fulness. "... Contented to be thinly regular:... Their tongue, enfeebled, is refined too much, And, like pure gold, it bends at every touch. Our sturdy Teuton yet will art obey, More fit for manly thought, and strengthened with allay."[388]